Villa Rides has a screenplay written Sam Peckinpah and Robert Towne but a very workmanlike direction from Buzz Kulik.Yul Brynner with added hair stars as Pancho Villa the great Mexican revolutionary with fiery passion, cunning, pig headedness and some romance as well. Robert Mitchum is a soldier of fortune with a biplane, a pilot who supplies the Mexican army with weapons, but is gradually forced to join the rebellious side after he is caught up with Villa and a Mexican beauty. Mitchum is laconic and nonchalant but we do get to see him drop homemade bombs from the plane.More impressive is Charles Bronson as Villa's right hand enforcer who clearly enjoys slaughtering people with style and some humour. Even shoots three people with one bullet in order to be economical.Herbert Lom and Fernando Rey round up the Mexicans also bring political intrigue to the table.The film was shot in Spain and it starts out as intriguing but it is uneven. The film varies in tone with some comedy but then you have some villagers getting slaughtered, others being executed and women being raped. There are some good action sequences but the film is too messy as its does not have a coherent narrative.

"Villa Rides" says in the opening credits that it is a tribute to Pancho Villa. And, as presented, the film is indeed a tribute in which it paints the former Mexican bandit in pretty colors. We should remember that the Mexican revolutionary had attacked an American town, Columbus, New Mexico. So, the U.S. government sent our own Gen. John J. Pershing into Mexico to hunt down and capture or kill Francisco "Pancho" Villa. His pursuit lasted from March 1916 to February 1917. Pershing was recalled when WW I broke out. Of course, none of this is mentioned in this film.So, remembering that Hollywood often glosses over history – even rewrites it at times, viewers should always take films like this with a grain of salt – as to their accuracy and truth. Of course, their enjoyment as entertainment is aside from that. Now, to counter that aspect, we should also remember that Villa was a real folk hero among the people. He was a Mexican "Robin Hood," who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He wasn't out for power himself, but was a genuine revolutionary for the freedom of the people. We should also remember that it was after 1917 that the dictatorships in Mexico began to oppress the church and religion. Recent Mexican President Vicente Fox acknowledged and lamented the previous tyrannical governments. After 1917, Mexico outlawed religion, killed priests, confiscated and closed churches, and desecrated altars. Not until 1992 did this situation begin to change. Can it be any wonder why so many Mexicans would flee their country and want to live in the U.S. in the 20th century? Besides the economic hardships, the people were terribly persecuted and denied their basic rights. Now for this film. It has a nice plot with some good action. The cast, for the most part, are quite good. Yul Bryner is very good as Pancho, although I suspect he is quite sanitized. Charles Bronson is very good as Fierro. Some other main characters are all quite good – Fernando Rey as Fuentes, Alexander Knox as Madero, and Herbert Lom as General Huerta. You'll notice I've saved Robert Mitchum until last. His role just doesn't fit as he portrays it. We need the character for the plot, but Mitchum just does not seem to play him right. He seems way too nonchalant. The script, or directing, or acting, or all three needed a major rework there to make his character much more believable. It put a sort of pale of humor over the story, and I don't think it really should be humorous. Not when we see families distraught over the hanging of many of their fathers, husbands and sons by the government army. And, I've never thought it funny when women are raped.So, I'll give this 7 stars for the action, the story and the roles of Bryner, Bronson and some others. Back to that opening credit on the film – I'm sure that Paramount didn't mean to imply that Hollywood welcomes foreign governments to attack towns in the U.S. Or that it will honor them for doing so. But, wait a minute. I could be wrong about Hollywood.

"Magnificent Seven" co-stars Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson team up again as Mexican bandits-turned-freedom fighters in veteran television director Buzz Kulik's south-of-the-border epic "Villa Rides," a quasi-historical drama about Pancho Villa and the Mexican revolution during the early 20th century. Robert Towne of "Chinatown" fame and Sam Peckinpah wrote the cynical, bullet-riddled screenplay based on William Douglas Lansford's entertaining biography. Indeed, some scenes--such as Bronson's character lining three soldiers up in a row and shooting three of them at once--occurred in the book. Brynner is typically charismatic as Villa, while Bronson is appropriately Neanderthal as Villa's second-in-command Rodolfo Fierro. Fierro was a trigger-happy hombre in real-life and was always prepared to shoot first and ask questions later. Ostensibly, to give American audiences somebody with which to identify, the filmmakers cast Robert Mitchum as an aviator running guns to the villains. Later, he is captured by Villa's forced and scheduled for execution until the protagonist allows him to live to fly for them. Kulik orchestrates several major action scenes in this sprawling shoot'em up and delivers them with sufficient gusto, helped considerably by composer Maurice Jarre's rip-snorting musical soundtrack and "Bridge on the River Kwai" cinematographer Jack Hildyard's scenic lensing with Spain substituting for Mexico. Spaghetti western villain Frank Wolff has some memorable scenes, especially his death scene where he tries to hide in a well and the heroes lob a package of explosives into it.

Mexican bandit and revolutionary Pancho Villa has been portrayed in films before, most notably by Wallace Beery in 1934's "Viva Villa!". Beery bore an uncanny resemblance to the real Pancho Villa, and by all accounts his portrayal is historically quite accurate, although the movie itself isn't. While overall this film is better than Beery's, the miscasting of Yul Brynner as Villa is difficult to overcome, and Robert Mitchum's sleepwalking through his role as an American soldier of fortune caught up in the Mexican revolution doesn't help, either. The two best performances in the film are Charles Bronson as Villa's right-hand man and chief executioner Rodolfo Fierro (Bronson accurately plays him as a man who can murder dozens of people with almost no thought about it; the real Fierro was even more of a butcher than he's shown to be here, and is known to have personally murdered hundreds of people) and Herbert Lom as the murderous Gen. Victoriano Huerta, and although Lom plays him as a sophisticated James Bond-ish Eurotrash villain than the semi-literate Indian and psychopathic killer that Huerta really was, it's still an effective job. The action set pieces are extremely well done and exciting, especially a rebel charge through a marsh against a heavily fortified federale position and, as has been previously mentioned, the film's soundtrack is truly outstanding. So even though Brynner may not be anyone's idea of Pancho Villa, the movie overall is worth a watch.